After announcing a $229 million dollar loss for the fiscal year, Nintendo held their financial results briefing with investors and posted the presentation details online. After taking a quick look through, I came across some information that I found to be pretty intriguing.

In an effort to take more risks to utilize their large stable of character IPs, the Big N is looking into doing more with NFC or “near-fields communication” which essentially allows the item to communicate with multiple objects, in this case the WiiU and 3DS. To help utilize this technology, Nintendo is developing figurines of their characters with NFC tech built in. Calling them the “Nintendo Figurine Platform” or NFP for short, the plan is to use these figures in multiple software titles. The ultimate plan is to turn these figures into a platform revolving around being collectibles and software titles.

Some of you may remember this functionality being used for an already released title on the WiiU, Pokemon Rumble U.

“With the launch of this new product genre, NFP, which will be compatible with Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, is going to serve as the first example of actively utilizing our own character IP. At the same time,” said Satoru Iwata during the financial briefing, “there are not only going to be decorative boxes for video game hardware and packages for software, but also Nintendo character figurines displayed on store shelves. This will provide exposure for Nintendo, play a great role in raising our brand awareness and create more opportunities for consumers to play video games.“

The big reveal for NFP is scheduled to be during their Nintendo Direct at E3 so we’ll really get to see just how these things work. If we’re talking about a Skylanders or Disney Infinity type platform, I could see that working due to the huge amount of characters Nintendo has and the familiarity with these characters and worlds.

So what do you guys think? It’s pretty obvious at this point that Nintendo is struggling and really needs to do something to try and turn the ship around. Do you think this is the spark they need?